


Bus Stop with Unguided Children and Rain

by NiceCoasters



Series: Poor Life Choices Regarding Spinning Tops [1]
Category: Metal Fight Beyblade | Beyblade: Metal Fusion
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-04
Updated: 2014-08-04
Packaged: 2018-02-11 17:09:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2076177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NiceCoasters/pseuds/NiceCoasters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes you meet your rivals and challenge them and sometimes you meet them and have a heart-to-heart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bus Stop with Unguided Children and Rain

It really was a small world for bladers, even now. The number of participants on the whole had grown significantly in the last few years (though many were disappointed when their tops didn't end up harnessing massive cosmic power) but the pool of top competitors was as small as ever. Even outside of tournaments there were some faces that just stood out in a crowd, and while they were there you might as well challenge them. With so few chances to face a worthy opponent it was just good manners.

So Ryuuga thought it was just coincidence the first few times he ran into Sora, who always seemed to come at him like a blur of blonde hair and nonsensical insults. (It was always something about being a snake, or an evil, manipulative villain, something cliche like that.) They fought, Sora lost, sometimes embarrassingly and sometimes coming so close to winning that it hurt even harder. It was the sixth or seventh time that Ryuuga began to expect Sora was following him, with that same dogged tenacity with which he had once followed Gingka.

One night, long after Ryuuga had lost count of their fights, they happened to meet in a bus stop on the side of the highway. The land stretched out endlessly around them, or maybe the dark and the rain just made it feel that way. It was so far from any place where a rumor of the "evil white haired kid with the weird laugh" could have gotten back to Sora that this might actually have been a coincidence. Ryuuga put his hand near his bey the moment Sora walked under the awning of the shelter, but Sora shook his head.

"Do you see it out there, I’m not going back in that," He said, pointing to his hair, which drooped down to his cheeks and in front of his eyes. 

Ryuuga stared back at him, trying to figure out if this was a trap. Sora talked a lot about playing fair and integrity, but that didn't mean he wouldn't stoop to tricks if no one was watching. He kept his hand close to his bey, just in case.

"I’m serious. I kept following you to challenge you, but I’m not fighting you now unless I can do it from this spot," Sora said, collapsing down on the seat next to Ryuuga.

"So you admit it?" Ryuuga said, he had thought he would have to approach the subject slantways to get anything near a confession, but here Sora was, blurting it out right away. Maybe he was as much of a straight shooter as he made himself out to be.

"Well, duh. I showed up in every city you were in yelling, this time I’ll win for sure!" Sora tried to reach his normal volume and enthusiasm, but it just made the tiredness of his voice stand out. How long had he been walking in the rain, Ryuuga wondered?

Instead of that he asked, "Don’t you have anything better to do?"

"Not really," Sora shrugged, looking into the darkness as if there was something bright in the distance, Ryuuga followed his gaze but saw nothing. "Gingka's overseas, I missed the deadlines for the big tournaments and, well, you’re a pretty great person to fight."

Ryuuga thought he should be offended, being a stand-in for a lesser blader like Gingka, but Sora's voice grew closer to its normal volume when he'd said those last few words. He wasn't even close to deciding how he should feel about his directionless follower when Sora started to lean into him.

"I think that's why, at least it was at first, but now I just want to learn more about you," Sora yawned, and Ryuuga tensed as Sora settled his head against his shoulder. Chill rainwater seeped into Ryuuga's white coat and he swallowed down the urge to shove Sora to the other side of the bus shelter. It would be a long time before he realized how happy he was that he hadn't given in to that particular destructive impulse.

"You can learn a lot about a blader from a battle," Sora said after a moment of rolling his head back and forth until he apparently found a comfortable spot on Ryuuga's shoulder, "Like how you depend on power over anything else, and you like to impress the crowd with flashy moves, but also don't like them to know you even see them. That's pretty cool. I’m kind of the same way."

Ryuuga looked over at Sora to find that he had his eyes closed. Maybe there had been a battle, in some way, and Ryuuga had lost and now had to bear the indignity of being a pillow.

"I don't care about them."

"Yeah?" Sora opened his eyes slightly to look up at him, "Then why do you always use your special moves, even when you're already going to win."

"Because," Ryuuga paused, he knew there was a reason, and that it had nothing to do with the crowd, but putting it into words was harder than he expected. Eventually he found the answer, a fact that cut through everything else, "Because L-Drago wants to."

"That's nice," was Sora's only response. Well, that and burrowing his head into Ryuuga's arm again, which distracted him into silence for a moment before shouting back with, "Are you even listening!"

Sora jolted up, "Yeah, yeah, I actually get what you're saying," He took his own beyblade out of his pocket with surprising speed for someone who had been on his way to dreamland, "It's like sometimes Cyber just wants to go at full blast, so you just have to let them go." He put his bey in the air for emphasis, and made some whooshing noises that were something like a beyblade in battle if one were feeling generous. His last bit of energy exhausted he slipped Cyber back into its place.

"And it's nice," Sora added, as quiet as Ryuuga had ever heard him, "Just being a part of something that knows what it wants."

Even Ryuuga has seen that sort of movie. When he had a few hours to kill and just wanted to go somewhere with air conditioning he'd seen that sort of movie, where the couple stares deeply into each other's eyes and kisses in the rain. Music swells and the camera pans around them and everyone cheers as he fights back the urge to puke at how sappy and dumb the whole thing is.

This isn't like that. One moment he and Sora are talking, nearing some sort of a connection, but not even looking at each other, and the next Sora's mouth is on his. It's cold and shivering and he thinks he can feel Sora's nervousness pulsing through to him, but it doesn't make him want to puke, not even close. It makes him want to do it again and again, until the cold and nerves disappear. 

Eventually they do, and eventually the bus comes, and eventually they can stop pretending that when they meet it’s just a coincidence. All of that will take some time, and Ryuuga is fine with that, and even though Sora is miraculously quiet, he seems okay with that too.

**Author's Note:**

> So once upon a time I had a Beyblade TFLN blog, and once upon a few times I got drunk and filled some fic requests. This is a slightly edited version of one of those stories. 
> 
> I love, love, love criticism and corrections. Please don't be afraid to share your thoughts and always keep your blader spirit!


End file.
